Midwest Guest

Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan Museum of Art reopens

Ann Arbor area art lovers anxiously anticipating the grand reopening of their treasured museum turned out in droves for the expanded University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) 24-hour grand reopening celebration.

Creating a buzz with a heavily hyped marathon party, the UMMA welcomed visitors to view its cool melding of modern and tradition elements, the result of a $41.9 million expansion project that closed the museum’s main building for nearly two years.

We’ve always loved visiting the UMMA, especially as a cool respite during a hot day of walking around the University of Michigan’s massive campus and funky Ann Arbor’s downtown.

Realizing an Ontario Hockey League playoff game took us within a dozen miles of the museum the night of the opening, we grabbed the opportunity for a quick post-game museum visit. So we found ourselves admiring the museum’s ambitious new re-do at 11 p.m.

Checking Twitter as we drove from the hockey game to the museum, I read a Tweet from the Ann Arbor News saying at least 5,000 people arrived at the museum during the first couple of hours after the 6 p.m. event’s start. I can believe that because even as the clock neared midnight, a large crowd packed the museum as they milled around the new spaces and waited for a DJ dance party to start.

The UMMA’s original space, a majestic 41,000-square-foot 1910-vintage Beaux Arts style building and the stark modernism of the new 53,000-square-foot Frankel Family Wing, seemed to meld seamlessly into each other to more than double the museum’s space.

The expansion means the UMMA can display closer to 10 percent of their 18,000-piece collection, as opposed to the previous space limiting them to showing closer to a mere three percent of the collection at any given time.

I loved the inclusion of more pieces from the museum’s beautiful collection of Tiffany art objects and the multiple multi-level galleries making for an expansive feeling (even as opening night crowds packed the galleries). Open study-storage galleries consisting of glass cases packed with nearly 1,000 treasures and interactive computer stations, where visitors clicked on a virtual cabinet location for in-depth information about the displayed items on a particular shelf, rated as one of my favorite features of the newly redone and re-imagined UMMA.

I heard museum officials repeatedly express the hope in local interviews that the new UMMA becomes a central community meeting place, a thought reiterated by the museum’s new guidebook, UMMA: A Beacon of Art in a chapter called “The Museum as a Town Square” and expanded building hours keeping some of the common areas open to the public until midnight each evening. The UMMA invites visitors to use the museum as a convenient meeting place, somewhere to study or catch up with email, and a respite from the busy campus, in addition to being a place to appreciate its art collection.

Visitors interested in the UMMA’s history, architecture and art collection can pick up the guidebook for $25 in the museum store. I also found some great free brochures at the UMMA front desk, including “The Art of Architecture” detailing major architectural features of the building’s design and “The Director’s Dozen”, Museum Director James Steward’s guide to an eclectic selection of museum pieces and some issues they evoke.    

Our short visit during the crowded opening party gave us just a small look at the museum’s ambitious renovation and expansion, whetting our appetite for a more leisurely daytime visit at a later date when we can enjoy the galleries and more clearly see the building’s exterior.

Note: Special thanks to Tim Marks for the use of his photo of me at the museum. Check out www.photowanderer.com for more of Tim’s great photos.

© Dominique King 2009

Things To Do
Ann Arbor

Photo Friday

Warmer weather means we can finally get back on the nature trails at Kensington Metropark, one of our favorite Detroit-area walking areas.

April and May are especially interesting for birdwatchers. The park’s Wildwing Trail is a 2-1/2 mile that skirts the lake and includes a boardwalk that allows you a glimpse of the blue heron nesting area seen in these photos. The trail also tracks past an osprey watch area and a variety of wildflowers.

We were out in the park a few weeks ago, but the nature trails were still quite muddy and it was too cold and windy to linger for a long time near the lake. So, we opted for a shorter walk along a portion of the park’s 8-plus-mile paved hike/bike trail circling Kent Lake.

I suspect it won’t be long now before we take to the nature area trails and revisit Wildwing to see how our feathered friends are faring this season.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009

Shay Locomotive moves lumber industry in Cadillac

Noticing several pictures of vintage trains on the walls as we enjoyed lunch at Shay Station coffeehouse café in Cadillac Michigan, and looking through the café’s picture windows to see a locomotive on display in the city park behind the café, I wondered about the possible connections between trains and the city.

We wandered out to the park after lunch to learn a little about Cadillac’s importance to Michigan’s logging history and how the inventiveness of a local man revolutionized that industry during the 19^th century.

Logging played an important part in Northern Michigan’s growth and development, with lumbering as the primary industry in towns like Cadillac during the late 1800s.

Credit for Cadillac’s flourishing as one of few lumbering communities without a river goes largely to Ephraim Shay and his Shay Locomotive, with its ability to climb steep grades and navigate sharp curves or track imperfections.

Shay, born in Ohio during 1839, enjoyed a fascinating career that included stints as a teacher, Civil War soldier and township clerk, before becoming a sawmill operator and moving near Cadillac to establish a mill and general store near a lumber camp in the 1870s.

At that time, loggers moved trees harvested along rivers by floating them downstream to a mill. They could only move the cut timber over land during the winter by dragging the large logs over the thick snow in horse- or oxen-drawn sleds. Snow less than two feet deep or unseasonably warm weather could shorten the season for transporting logs to the water and mean lower profits for mills.

Shay wondered about better ways to move lumber without relying on heavy snow cover, the possibilities of increasing profits by being able to log year round and reducing transportation costs.

Shay built a crude temporary tramway in 1875, which allowed him to move lumber year round. However, steep grades proved dangerous because runaway logs often killed or seriously injured the horses and oxen powering the moves.

Shay next experimented with steam locomotives, which easily hauled heavy loads up and down grades. But, the force of the pistons used by conventional engines at the time damaged some of the tracks.

Shay continued to spend money on his tinkering, with one source saying he invested at least the then-astronomical sum of $1,000 in the project.

He worked with several people, including William Crippen (a machinist and foundry operator in Clam Lake, which later became the City of Cadillac), to perfect his designs.

The inventive Shay eventually assigned rights to the locomotive to the Lima Locomotive Works in Ohio. That company refined the design and enlarged it over time, eventually building nearly all of the 2,771 Shay locomotives ever manufactured before closing down production in 1945.

Today, less than 100 Shays still reportedly exist. Some Shays enjoy a quiet life like the 1898 two-truck Shay used by the Cadillac-Soo Lumber Company and restored in 1985 on display in Cadillac’s park. A few Shay locomotives still enjoy active service, often in tourist railroads.

Today, tourism is one of the engines largely driving Cadillac with its proximity to the Huron-Manistee National Forest, Lake Mitchell and Lake Cadillac, and the William Mitchell State Park.

Meanwhile, Shay’s lonely locomotive sits quietly in Cadillac’s City Park as a reminder of the town’s boom days as a bustling lumber community and as a tribute to the inventive mind of its inventor.

Note:

I found a lot of interesting information about the Shay Locomotive online, with a wealth of information simply more than I could distill in a single article here.

For those interested in learning more about the Shay Locomotive or railroading history, here are a few of the more interesting links about those subjects I found as I researched this article.

Canada Science and Technology Museum

Shay Locomotive Wiki page

Shay Locomotives

Shay Locomotive restoration at California’s El Dorado Western Railway Foundation

© Dominique King 2009

Stop at Shay Station, Cadillac’s Coffeehouse Café

Getting our ice tea and coffee fix is pretty much a daily thing for us, but even as the number of coffeehouses increased around our area, the number of independent coffeehouses dwindled down to nearly none in recent years.

So, we make a special effort to seek out small and quirky indie coffeehouses as we travel.

We’ve driven up to northwestern Michigan many times over the years—usually taking the same route by following I-96 out to Lansing and swinging north to catch US-127 up to US-10 and getting off at the two-lane M-115 for the last leg of the trip. Our drive up M-115 generally takes us through the touristy area of Cadillac and skirts a piece of its large Lake Mitchell, but we never got off of the highway to make the trip of several miles into downtown Cadillac.

I’d read kudos about the town’s Shay Station in my monthly Traverse Magazine. I decided to take the detour to visit the Cadillac coffeehouse cafe and pick up an ice tea as I drove home alone from a trip “Up North”.

I quickly found Shay Station on Cadillac’s main drag, Mitchell Street, right in the heart of downtown.

Stepping inside the unassuming store front, I immediately wished I had more time to linger. The long, narrow space played host to a 1920s-era soda fountain near the front of the store, a fireplace, tin ceilings and large picture windows at the back of the café overlooking Lake Mitchell, an old train-station-turned-veteran-center and a Shay locomotive from which the café takes its name (check back at Midwest Guest later in the week for more about Shay locomotives and their important role in Cadillac/northern Michigan lumbering history during the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries).

We finally had the chance recently to visit Shay Station on the way north and linger over lunch late on a winter weekday afternoon.

We found the “half size” sandwich portions and a cup of soup made for a plentiful meal, and the made-to-order sandwiches like my smoked chicken salad with Romaine arrived quickly. The crunch of the crisp lettuce and the soothing warmth of Shay’s loaded baked potato soup complimented each other perfectly, and the beautiful lake view we enjoyed from our table near the back of the café was the perfect lagniappe to the meal.

Checking out The Shay Scoop newsletter at our table let us know that the café coffeehouse is about much more than lunch. Shay Station books live entertainment Friday evenings and offers special events like a class this month for kids wishing to learn how to make an old-fashioned ice cream soda. Wi-Fi availability makes the business a nice place to do a little work or Web surfing. A local chaplain also has regular hours at the café, inviting visitors to stop by and say hello or chat any Tuesday morning if they wish.

The café’s location in downtown Cadillac offers a nice area for a quick post-meal walk before you get back in your car to continue your trip.

We don’t get Up North nearly as often as we’d like, but I suspect Shay Station will become one of our regular stops as we head north from now on.

-Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

This marks Midwest Guest’s 100^th post, so I thought I’d do something a little different and fly a little further from home by posting a few photos from our visit to Paris a couple years ago.

I loved people-watching at the Jardin des Tuileries.

This woman quickly drew a crowd, and I suspect she and her friends had a standing date at the park each day!

Her feathered friends flocked around her, with many of them eating from her hands or perching on her arms. Look closely at this shot where I included a cropped and enlarged version. One brave birdie flies right up into the woman’s face as the Bird Lady of Jardin des Tuileries appears to somewhat testily tell it to wait its turn.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King

Catalog canoe delivery from Minnesota

There are some things you like to try before you buy, but Tim found himself high and dry when he went shopping for a canoe last year.

We bought our first canoe, one of those heavy aluminum boats, after a friend saw it with a “for sale” sign at a curb in front a nearby house. We later sold that canoe by putting it in front of our house with a similar sign on it and waiting until a young couple came by and bought it.

I remember going to open paddle days with Tim as nearby outfitters converged on a local park where potential canoe and kayak customers could paddle the product around a lake or river before deciding which boat suited them best. We bought a small fiberglass solo canoe and a larger tandem canoe over the years after first trying out boats on the water at similar events or on a river at a local outfitter store close to home.

Local outfitters with a great selection of canoes and open paddles where customers can try a boat before they buy a boat are difficult, if not impossible, to find around the Detroit area these days. The local outfitter where we bought our fiberglass solo and tandem canoes closed long ago, and outfitters here now seem to carry mostly kayaks with no opportunity to take the boats for a test float.

So, when Tim decided he wanted another solo canoe, he turned to his Piragis catalog.

Piragis is an outfitter and catalog company based in Ely, a small town in northern Minnesota near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).

Now, we’re not entirely unfamiliar with Piragis and the BWCAW.

Our last visit to the area occurred during the infamous Fourth of July Blowdown in 1999, a widespread storm that fell 600 square miles of forest and caused $3 million in damage in Minnesota.

We’d just visited Piragis to pick up two canoes we’d rented for a week’s visit to the area. We strapped the boats to the top of our Mercury Mountaineer and began driving to the nearby Blue Heron Bed & Breakfast, when a furious rainstorm started and straight line winds threatened to blow our rented boats away into the wilderness.

We, and our rented boats, survived the drive and we had a great trip after the storm subsided and the power gradually came back on in the area.

We’ve purchased small things from Piragis’ catalog over the intervening years, so Tim felt confident about the Minnesota company when calling their canoe experts to purchase this latest boat.

Steve at Piragis suggested a Wenonah Wilderness in Kevlar Flex lay-up to Tim, saying that it met his desire for a lightweight and stable boat to handle the paddling Tim likely wanted to do on lakes and quiet rivers in our area.

Tim selected the color and features he wanted on his Wenonah and prepared to take delivery on his custom-built boat.

Waiting for a truck from Fed Ex or UPS, or the local mail carrier, to show up at the door with Tim’s canoe wasn’t what Piragis had in mind, though.

Piragis employs a somewhat unique delivery system for canoes going outside of their local area. As Tim’s boat became ready for shipment, the folks at Piragis posted a notice on a board at the store where customers headed home from their own BWCAW trip could sign up to deliver canoes to customers who could not make the trip to pick up their new canoes.

Steve told Tim the company experienced better results with fewer canoes damaged in transit by offering customers the opportunity to make a little money by relaying boats to their ultimate delivery destination.

It might seem a bit fitting that it began raining as we drove a couple of hours out to Ionia, Michigan to pick up Tim’s new canoe from the fellow who ferried it down from Ely. Fortunately, we didn’t have to contend with the high winds that we experienced the first time we picked up canoes from Piragis.

Steve’s advice on buying the Wenonah was spot-on for Tim, with the boat being fun to paddle and easy to handle because of its light weight.

The Wenonah is also easy to handle when it comes to storage. I have what most folks might call a 1-1/2 car garage, but now it’s really a 3-canoe garage with barely enough room for one of the cars and our bicycles!

© Dominique King

CCHA match-ups set for finals in Detroit

College hockey fans converge on “The Joe” next weekend for the two-day Final Four tournament for the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) crown.

The tourney makes for an exciting weekend of fast-paced hockey for fans, but the trip to Joe Louis Arena, home to the Detroit Red Wings, can be especially exciting for promising young players hoping to cap their college careers with a championship.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) team makes a rare appearance at The Joe this weekend with their third trip to the famous arena. Previous appearances in Detroit for the Nanooks include a third-place finish in the CCHA’s 2005 Super Six tournament and in 2002, when they lost to Ohio State Buckeyes in overtime.

UAF faces a tough challenge by playing the University of Michigan Wolverines in the semi-final match-up because U of M’s proximity to the school’s home in Ann Arbor, Michigan means that many Detroit area Wolverine fans and alumni pack the game with a crowd cheering for a U of M win.

The Northern Michigan Wildcats from Marquette, Michigan and the Irish of Notre Dame from South Bend, Indiana face each other in the other semi-final meet on Friday.

The winners of the Irish/Wildcat games and Nanook/Wolverine games face each in the CCHA title match on Saturday.

One or more of the teams from this tourney have a good opportunity to advance into the NCAA championship rounds and hopefully go all the way through to compete in the NCAA’s Frozen Four final.

This year, the Frozen Four compete in Washington D.C. April 9-11. The tourney’s appearance in DC marks the first time for the capital hosting a Division I NCAA Championship event.

We’ve attended nearly every CCHA tournament at Joe Louis because, as with the Great Lakes Invitational Tournament, we enjoy the skilled level of play and the relative level of affordability of college hockey tickets compared to NHL game prices. It’s also fun to see players we followed during their college careers make it to the pros, and we can tell people we remember seeing them play in CCHA games at Joe Louis Arena.

If four hockey games in two days aren’t enough for hockey fans in town for the weekend, the CCHA hosts a Fan Fest at the Wintergarden (a sunny and spacious atrium at the nearby Renaissance Hotel). Fan fest visitors enjoy interactive games, shopping for CCHA memorabilia, trophy displays, Zamboni displays and live music from some of the school pep bands and local bands.

A pre-tournament presentation of CCHA team and individual awards happens Thursday evening at Detroit’s opulent 1920s-vintage Fox Theater.

Die-hard fans who want to see every moment of the tournament might want to take along a magazine, newspaper or book to read during the usually lengthy intermission between games each day. There is usually around an hour in between games to allow plenty of time for overtimes or other delays in the first game so that the second scheduled game starts on time each day, and the arena does not allow ticketholders to re-enter the arena after leaving.

We used to enjoy taking photographs during the college games, but the arena now has a fairly restrictive photography policy, not allowing cameras with lenses over 80mm into the arena. This includes cameras with detachable lenses or lenses that extend over 80mm, so even my little point-and-shoot camera wouldn’t legally past the test. That’s why you only see a shot of the arena’s exterior here.

Another caveat for fans planning to attend the games—like many big-city arenas, Joe Louis requires fans to enter through metal detectors and security searches purses, bags and backpacks. Save yourself a little time by not carrying a bag or purse into the arena, or carrying items likely to trip the metal detector in your pockets so that you have to stop and chat with security before entering the game.

Related stories

Drop the Puck!-Great Lakes Invitational Hockey Tournament

© Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

While the polar bears put on quite a show for us when we last visited the Detroit Zoo earlier this year, we saw plenty of other animals that same day.

One of the zoo’s newest residents is a 9-month-old female camel named Suren. We caught Suren sunning herself in the camel yard with 12-year-old Princess and 13-year-old Boris.

The camels still wear their thick winter coats at this time of the year.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009

Potholes, patchwork and highway safety

It’s spring, and my thoughts turn to…potholes!

That’s not surprising as potholes and assorted problems caused by winter wear on roads, followed by lines of orange construction barrels spouting up along the streets and highways, are a harbinger of spring in many areas throughout the Midwest.

Here in the Detroit area, the local media fills with accounts of cars swallowed up by the black holes of doom and annoyances like bent bumpers, flattened tires and bone-rattling rides as spring brings the winter thaw and the roads hump, flake, break and generally fall to pieces in many places.

Ruined roads and construction obstruction spark a lot of frustration, as daily commutes turn into nightmares for drivers dodging the ever-present potholes and barrels.

But what about the workers who toil to smooth the way for motorists?

A 2008 Traffic Safety Summit report from the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), seeking ways to improve worker visibility and reduce crashes in road work zones, cites the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Statistics (BLS) as estimating the top cause of worker deaths in work zones as “struck by traffic” at 25 percent.

The BLS reports preliminary fatal work injury figures at 120 in Michigan for the year 2007, with highway crashes among one of the most frequent type of workplace fatalities occurring that year. Nationally, highway crashes also accounted for almost a quarter of workplace deaths.

The good news is that while death due to such highway incidents in Michigan numbered 24 in 2007, that figure represents a decrease from 31 such deaths in 2006.

Perhaps signs urging drivers to watch for highway workers and “give ‘em a brake”, and detailing increased fines in construction zones for speeding and other infractions, contributed toward making roads safer for workers.

MDOT current and retired employees found a unique way to help raise motorists’ awareness of the importance taking care through construction zones, while remembering fellow workers who lost their lives working along the states’ roads.

Visitors stopping at a rest stop in the middle of the mitten at Clare, Michigan along US Highway 127 see a large visual reminder of these perils.

We’ve used the Clare Welcome Center as a convenient stop on our way to northern Michigan for years. It’s one of Michigan’s more elaborate rest areas with amenities like a staffed center offering maps and other tourist information, picnic areas and dog runs. The center sits near several major Michigan highways.

We usually make it our stop after driving mostly freeways from metro Detroit and before hopping on the two-lane M-115 to continue on to northwest Michigan. We usually make this trip at least once every year, so we immediately noticed when a new public art installation appeared on the grounds in 1994.

Seven large steel sculptures representing state highway workers performing activities associated with road work, like surveying, engineering or digging, stand as a memorial to Michigan highway workers who lost their lives working along state roads. One figure stands inside of the welcome center, looking out into the plaza where his six co-workers perform their duties.

MDOT employees, past and present, raised money through an independent effort to fund the project. Sculptor Carl Floyd constructed the project from sheet metal and other materials salvaged from highway jobs.

Today, fifteen years after the installation’s 1994 dedication, the figures still stand sentinel at the welcome center to honor their fallen workers and as a reminder to motorists to take it easy and show a little extra consideration for construction crews working to smooth the road before them.

© Dominique King 2009

Crazy Horse Memorial carves a memorable impression for South Dakota visitors

The mere size of the Crazy Horse mountain carving in South Dakota’s Black Hills is impressive. The size and scope of an ambitious project to pay tribute to Native Americans by educating the general public, as well as generations of young Native Americans, may be the bigger story behind the massive memorial to the Lakota warrior.

Most people know Crazy Horse best as key in defeating United States troops at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana, but more than a million tourists visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial may be most familiar with the idealized vision of the warrior conceived by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski.

Ziolkowski’s vision began taking shape after a letter from Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear reacting to the carving of Mount Rushmore by expressing the desire to remind “the white man”…that…“the red man has great heroes, also.”

Ziolkowski worked at Mount Rushmore, so he understood the work involved with such a large mountainside carving. He also understood that the project as he envisioned it would require unusual dedication and decided to focus the reminder of his life to it.

The sculptor began work on the memorial on June 3, 1948 using hand tools and drills. He drew up detailed instructions for the project, knowing he would not live to see its completion.

Ziolkowski died in 1982. Today, his widow Ruth and seven of his 10 adult children continue work on the memorial more than 60 years after he began work on it.

Even inspired by a desire to honor Native American values and heroes, the memorial still inspires some controversy. Critics question whether defacing the Black Hills, seen as sacred ground by Native Americans, and disturbing the natural landscape is the best way to honor Crazy Horse and Native peoples.

There is also this question: how much does the likeness actually resemble Crazy Horse? No one knows for sure because the Lakota warrior avoided cameras and family purposely buried him in an undisclosed location after his early and violent death.

Proponents of the project see the memorial more as a metaphorical vision honoring Native American values like bravery, respect, generosity, wisdom and loyalty. It also honors the battles of those like Crazy Horse to protect their lands and treaties.

Another amazing aspect of the project is the funding. Ziolkowski reportedly twice declined millions in government grants, wanting to remain free of government control that he felt might compromise or curtail long-range cultural and educational goals beyond the actual carving.

This explains the $10 per person admission we paid to visit the memorial, although there is a price break for families, active military personnel, Scout groups, those arriving other than by car and area residents.

A national fund drive during 2006 raised more than $26 million for carving and expanding the memorial’s cultural and educational programs like a college scholarship fund for Native American students.

Even as fundraising for the world’s largest mountain carving and the memorial’s even larger cultural and educational ambitions continue, when does it end? Again, no one knows for sure.

Workers completed carving Crazy Horse’s face in 1998, the 50^th anniversary of the project’s start. Crazy Horse’s 87.5 foot high head and flowing hair cover enough area to fit all four of the Mount Rushmore presidents’ heads. Plans call for a completed carving 641 feet long and 563 feet high, as well as a university and medical training center for Native Americans.

We felt the most worthwhile part of our visit was seeing the museums and collections of Native American art and artifacts from native cultures across the continent.

The Crazy Horse Memorial site FAQ suggests that many visitors need at least 2 to 4 hours at the site for watching a 20-minute orientation DVD, “contemplating” the mountain carving and seeing the Indian Museum of North America.

We found that, even with a couple of hours, we didn’t have nearly enough time to see everything—especially at the museums.

We visited on a clear day and had a good view of the carving from the viewing deck, although from just one vantage point. The site offers bus rides to the foot of the mountain for additional fees, weather and blast schedule permitting.

I especially enjoyed shopping in the gift store (and anyone who knows me knows that I am not a huge shopper), because my difficult-to-shop-for father always liked Crazy Horse and finding Christmas gifts for him that year was a snap with a Crazy Horse belt buckle and money clip. The store also stocked plenty of beautiful Native American art and jewelry by craftspeople working at the memorial.

Related stories

Warm Western hospitality at French Creek Ranch Bed & Breakfast

Mount Rushmore memorializes larger-than-life presidents

Photo Friday-Mount Rushmore

© Dominique King 2009